Introduction Like most dramatic and unsettling political events, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca temporarily captured the imagination of the world’s media and political pundits. Although the initial public outrage and concern generally faded once it became clear that the Pope would survive, certain individuals and […]
The Time of The Assassins: The Inside Story of the Plot to Kill the Pope Claire Sterling, Angus and Robertson, London 1984 The Plot to Kill the Pope Paul B. Henze, Croom Helm, London 1984 These two books cover the same ground, more or less, and have the same thesis: the KGB used the […]
A man with Friends The Third Secret: the CIA, Solidarity and the KGB’s plot to kill the Pope Nigel West HarperCollins, London, 2000, £19.99 Let’s dispose of the ‘Third Secret’ nonsense. West claims that Pope John – the Polish Pope – was told the ‘third secret’ of the Fatima revelations; and that this ‘third […]
[…] War, had received photocopies of telegrams indicating that the US Ambassador to Italy had worked out a plan to link the Bulgarians to the shooting of the Pope. The US embassy says they’re fakes. It certainly sounds implausible that anything so sensitive would be transmitted by telegram. But then Reagan has appointed a lot […]
As the election for the new Pope began a fascinating US radio interview with a former senior CIA official was broadcast in which the name Michael Ledeen (See Lobsters 31, 45, 47) came up in connection with the forged Niger uranium documents cited by both the US and UK governments in the build-up to […]
[…] it remains interesting – plausible, even – but nothing more. And for the book’s central thesis, that Calvi and/or Gelli and/or Marcinkus and/or A N Other murdered Pope John Paul I there is not a shred of evidence. (There isn’t even any evidence that the Pope was murdered at all.) Yallop actually has written […]
[…] until this point, despite its many misgivings and without ever explicitly endorsing the venture, the Vatican had been prepared to go along with Hitler’s Crusade Against Bolshevism. Pope Pius XII clearly hoped that it would rid Europe of what Rome regarded as the greater evil of Communism prior to a return to more civilised […]
[…] which fear of communism shaped Vatican actions before, during and after the war is astounding’. The priority the Vatican gave to anti-Communism did not just lead the Pope to fail to take a decisive stand against the Holocaust. As Phayer shows, when the Nazis invaded Poland and began their attempt to extinguish the Polish […]
[…] (1) What brought Gehlen to mind was a mischievous little article in a recent edition of the French newsletter Intelligence Online (2) reminding us that the new Pope Benedict XVI was formerly of the Diocese of Munich (where Gehlen had his headquarters) and claiming that German security officials were not unhappy at his rise […]
[…] be Director of the CIA. Consider just one incident, the textual appropriations, displacements, and strategies that surround the inquiry into the 1981 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II. Ten texts are involved. ‘Text No. 1 is a speech given by the Secretary of State Alexander Haig the day after President Reagan’s […]
